Halve Maen

The PRLab team took on this challenge with the outcome clear as day: make a book that will serve as an example and as an additional resource that Halve Maen can provide Dutch startups or scale-ups looking to expand to the US. This was, of course, a joint effort with Halve Maen, the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York, TechLeap, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The book encompassed a lot of research and complementary features such as a motion graphics video, written articles of the 26 interviews conducted, as well as a survey for quantitative data and a research report with the findings. This is all in addition to the book both in digital and in print.

Firstly, establishing the purpose of the outcome; the purpose of creating a book is to provide future Dutch companies with interests of expanding with relatable information, do’s and don’ts, of the whole expansion process. This of course, from people who took the big leap themselves.

Then, PRLab assigned one of its American writers to conduct interviews with representatives of Dutch organizations who have previously expanded their operations to the US-- a total of 26 different companies.

Each interview consisted of questions relating to the whole process and experience of expanding of that individual company. So you can imagine that each interview consisted of questions relating to different experiences. However, the questions were mostly along the lines of:

1. How was the transition?
2. What is there to know when you’re thinking about expanding to the US?
3. What were the biggest challenges and/or successes?
4. What were the key cultural differences you experienced between doing business in the US versus in the EU?
5. How did you grow your US market initially?
6. Did the expansion cause your company a change or adjustments?
7. Did you have to offer new and/or different services?
8. What are your words of advice for someone looking to do the same as your organization?

Once the interviews were conducted, the interviewer wrote the interviews into articles that later used as chapters to the Halve Maen book. To complement the chapters, are pullouts disseminated throughout the book made of the statistics gathered from the research PRLab conducted. By adding useful statistics to the words of advice provided by the founders and CEOs of the organizations mentioned, PRLab added another layer of useful information.